Chrono vs Cauldron
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chrono
Read full descriptionHide full description
We have all been trapped in that pod. The board is a clogged mess, someone has been staring at their hand for ten minutes trying to sequence a cantrip, your cold brew is empty, and you are aging in real time. Enter Chrono-Tithe. Chrono-Tithe is not just a sleek life counter. It is an automated tax collector for slow play. Instead of a passive chess clock everyone ignores, it enforces an escalating “Tithe Tax.” Overstay your welcome in the think tank and your life total starts draining automatically. It is the perfect way to keep the table moving, or to quietly pressure the pod while you assemble your lock behind a wall of artifacts. CORE FEATURES (always free) THE TITHE ENGINE: An escalating turn timer that ramps through four tiers, from Standard to Accelerated to Punishing to Lethal. Choose the turn the tax starts to tighten and watch it change the way your pod plays. BLIND-TAP LIFE TRACKING: Zero-friction split cards. Tap the right side of a player’s color block to gain life, tap the left to lose it. Press and hold to swing by 5 at a time. You never have to take your eyes off the board. FULL COMMANDER TRACKING: Poison, energy, experience, +1/+1, commander tax, and per-source commander damage, with 21 from a single commander tracked and flagged automatically. Monarch and the Initiative too. BUILT FOR THE TABLE: 2 to 6 players, format presets for Commander, 1v1, Two-Headed Giant, and Brawl, a pre-game lobby to set seating and decide who goes first, plus a dice roller, coin flip, and random-player picker. PLAY TOGETHER, ON EVERY PHONE: Connect the whole pod over local Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and everyone plays on their own screen, in sync. Tap your own life, pass your own turn, track your own commander damage, and watch it land on every device instantly. No internet, no accounts, no server. Joining a pod is always free. POST-GAME BREAKDOWN: Average turn length for every pilot and a golden Efficiency Star for the fastest player at the table. Hit Replay Pod to run it back with the same roster in one tap. MINIMALIST AND TACTILE: Deep true blacks, fluid gestures, and subtle haptics, designed to preserve battery and reduce visual fatigue during long matches. Scales cleanly from iPhone to a 12.9-inch iPad, and the screen stays awake during play. CHRONO-TITHE PRO (optional, one-time) The full game is free forever, with every life total, counter, timer, and tool included. A single one-time unlock (no subscription) adds: HOST MULTIPLAYER: Host a synced pod so the whole table plays on their own phones. Joining a pod is always free; hosting one is Pro. THEMES AND ACCENTS: Ten background themes and a full neon accent palette. CLOCK MODES: Alternate ways for the clock to bite. Three are live: Sudden Death (at the Lethal tier, overtime eliminates you outright), Time Bank (unused seconds roll into your next turn), and Chess Clock (one game-long budget per player). Team Clock is on the way, included free. TIMER-ONLY MODE: Switch the Tithe off to time turns with no life loss. COMMANDER ART AND SEAT COLORS: Set any commander’s art as a seat’s background and give each seat its own color. MATCH HISTORY: Every pod saved and synced to your own iCloud, so it survives a reinstall or a new phone with no login. All future Pro features included, free. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No ads. No tracking. Your roster, settings, and history live on your device and in your own iCloud, never on our servers. Multiplayer is a direct device-to-device connection over your local network, not through any server of ours. Chrono-Tithe collects zero data about you. Set your pod. Start the clock. Pay the tithe. Chrono-Tithe is an unofficial fan-made utility. It is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Magic: The Gathering and Commander are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast.
Cauldron
This app acts as a life counter for card games, allowing users to print tokens, dice, and cards directly from their device. It offers various game modes and a comprehensive index of cards and tokens for quick access and printing.
- Voice-activated card and token printing
- Life counter with player damage tracking
- Supports multiple game modes
- Dice rolling and coin flipping
- Card and token index with search
- Customizable token creation
Read full descriptionHide full description
Say the name of a card. It comes out of your printer. Cauldron is the life counter that prints tokens. Hold the microphone, say "goblin" or "4/4 angel with flying" or "treasure," and the card is found, dithered and printed on receipt paper in about a second. LIFE COUNTER • Drag from one seat to another to deal commander damage. Partner commanders are counted apart. • Draw a glyph on a seat to give it the monarch, poison, energy, experience, rads or the city's blessing. • Three fingers across the board starts a new game. Two fingers opens the settings. • Circle the dial to undo and redo. • Supports up to 8 players in a pod (7+ on iPad / tablet only) • Say "2/4/6/8 players" to change the game size. • Archenemy and Treachery, dealt and printed by the app. • This is a full-fledged life counter, without menus. THE PRINTER • Cauldron drives 7 different printers over Bluetooth, and two others over Wi-Fi. • The printers use no ink - merely fast heat transfer to receipt paper, they will not smear. • A print queue lines up as many cards as you like, shows what is left, and can be stopped and carried on. E-INK • Cauldron supports 5 variety of thin, cheap e-ink displays for token print targets, written to over NFC DICE AND COINS AND MORE • Say "roll a d20" or "flip a coin." • Four, six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty and a hundred sides... • all announced out loud by a voice synthesizer that sounds like it was built in 1982. • "Momir {number}" to get a random creature. Say "Calling Mr. Vig" for a standalone Momir Vig faux-payphone interface. • Say "copy camera" to photograph a card and print it as a copy. THE TOKEN INDEX Say "token index" or hold four fingers on the board to open it. • Browse and search every printable token, by name or by artist, with filters for each kind of token. • Swipe through each token's artwork and print the one you like. • Tap an artwork to keep it out of random picks, or long-press to always print that one. • SHUFFLE, RANDOM and SEQUENTIAL control how artwork is dealt when you ask by voice. • A UB switch keeps Universes Beyond artwork out of random picks. • Create your own tokens, and add your own artwork to or photo library. • Favorites: drag the heart onto artwork you love, then print one, print them all, or share them as an Instagram story. • See any card full screen, with the artist credited u • Tap (i) for a guide to everything. THE CARD INDEX Say "card index" to open it. • Every real Magic card, held on your phone, to search, sort and print. • Browse by set, and print a booster pack. • Print a whole card, or just its art or its words. GAME MODES • Archenemy, Treachery, Planechase and Horde • Chaos draft Every token is indexed on your phone, so lookup is quick. Speech is recognised on the device. Nothing about your game is uploaded anywhere. No Accounts. No Signups. WHAT YOU NEED A supported thermal printer and a roll of paper. Cauldron will show you which paper and printer to purchase. Card data and images from Scryfall. Cauldron is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of Apple's Standard Terms of Use apply: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Cauldron at none against Chrono's 1. Cauldron also leads on iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.6). On price, update cadence, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Chrono sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Cauldron asks for nothing beyond the download.
Chrono ships an update every 4 days, Cauldron every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chrono | Cauldron |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (54 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 54 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 21 MB | 96 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | NICHOLAS SALVATORE PUYA | Joseph Liechty |
In-app purchases
Chrono
- Chrono-Tithe Pro$4.99
Cauldron
No in-app purchases









